During Rotterdam Art Week (10-12 February), art lovers can walk the 5 km Art Route Schiedam and indulge themselves in a varied and high quality art program at 12 locations in Schiedam with live music and openings at various locations in the route. Art Route Schiedam starts at OpenArtExchange and leads through the old city center of Schiedam with its monumental museum quarter, canals, windmills, the old city park and ends at the experimental multidisciplinary art spaces SodaFabriek and Ultraum/Glasfabriek, from where key locations can also be visited by boat. For more info, see www.artrouteschiedam.nl
OpenArtExchange just started off Art Route Schiedam/Rotterdam Art week by opening its latest exhibition #Faces on Friday 10 February, with great company and amazing live Fulani music from Omar Ka & friends. Right before the opening, Joke Bakker talked about Art Route Schiedam and the group exhibition #Faces in this interview with JW TV.
Below some first photo impressions of the opening. The exhibition with sculptures from Klaashenk Blonk (The Netherlands) and paintings and mixed media works of Casca (1976, Portugal/Angola), Gabriel Jideonwor (1991, Nigeria), Jonathan Vatunga (1996, France/DR Congo) and Syl Loko (1996, Benin) can still be visited during regular opening times on Wednesday-Saturday 10:00-17:00 pm until March 25.
About # Faces
The group exhibition #Faces is the first exhibition of our 2023-program on Cultural identity and kicks of with a broad exploration of contemporary African identity through a series of portraits of Africans. For #Faces we have selected a varied group of artists, consisting of different generations with ages ranging between 24 and 82, originating from 4 different African countries, partly living in diaspora in Europe (France/DR Congo, Portugal/Angola, Benin, Nigeria,) and one artist from the Netherlands, all presenting their latest work. As such, they encompass fresh views on contemporary African identities from artists living within African societies, artists having lived in both African and European contexts and artists living in Europe and having visited Africa. That results in a colorful gallery of portraits full of resilience, determination, hope and energy, created with quite different materials ranging from various painting styles, mixed media works with nails on plywood, mixed media works with painting and collage of photography, to glazed ceramic sculptures.